Supercomputers: The Amazing Race

The “ideal supercomputer” has an infinitely fast clock, executes a single instruction stream program operating on data stored in an infinitely large, and fast single-memory. Backus established the von Neumann programming model with FORTRAN. Supercomputers have evolved in steps: increasing processor speed, processing vectors, adding processors for a program held in a single memory monocomputer; and interconnecting multiple computers over which a distributed program runs in parallel. Thus, supercomputing has evolved from a hardware engineering design challenge of the Cray Era(1960-1995) of the monocomputer to the challenging of creating programs that operate on distributed (mono)computers of the Multicomputer Era (1985- present).